Because I spent enough time in ERs, Thank you very much.

When you work in the machine shop there are a lot of safety considerations.  These are not of the often fatuous "Health and Safety" edicts that my UK friends have to tolerate.  No, big powerful machines will hurt you if you are cavalier in their immediate proximity.

I certainly am not going to let my hair grow into a dangling pony tail.  I have seen enough in the ER to be a believer in eye protection.  I readily acknowledge my degree of ignorance and will often be asking for help with unfamiliar tasks.  Since Junior High shop class back in the early 1970s I have been assured constantly that oily rags left unattended for even a few seconds will surely burst into flames from spontaneous combustion. 

So most of the safety discussion was straightforward.

But I did have to stop and think about The Ring.

In my earlier career I would of course have to take my wedding ring off regularly.  Any time I would scrub in to assist in surgery or do a delivery off it would come.  The easy thing there was to just loop it into the little string ties on the scrub suit pants.

Once or twice after a particularly long and tiring night I did forget I had done this and toss the scrubs into the laundry basket.  In each instance I remembered soon after and recovered it.

But in the machine shop I won't be wearing scrubs, so where does the wedding ring go?

Pocket of the jeans would be easy and logical, but I don't think ideal.  Other stuff goes in these pockets.  My phone, car keys, change.  All mechanically inclined guys have a pocket knife.  I could see the ring ending up on the floor when I pulled something else out.  Or worse yet, my wife has a decades long career of dredging stuff up from the bottom of the washing machine. She used to keep a collection, roughly fifty Boy-Years of pennies, paper clips, fishing tackle, nuts and bolts.  It would not be a proud spousal moment to have my wedding ring end up in the Detritus of Housework collection.

So I'm going the full Frodo Baggins when working in the shop.

I guess the photo suggests that The One Ring is not doing such a bang up job at preserving me unchanged over many decades of long life. But who knows, without it things might be much worse!